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TIL that when Nichelle Nichols read for the part of a communications officer in 'Star Trek', she had a copy of Robert Ruark's 'Uhuru' with her. 'Uhuru' is Swahili for 'freedom', and when Gene Roddenberry heard what the word meant, he changed the character's name to 'Uhura'.

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k74E TIL that Anthony Hopkins won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Hannibal Lecter. His Screen time was little over 16 minutes, less than 14% of the film’s running time.
xVKwb TIL during the Civil War a Maine woman was captured at sea by Confederate pirates but escaped by getting them blackout drunk and then convincing their slave crew to "make them prisoners" and sail with her to freedom.
vmwr TIL that the first successful company to market chow mein in the United States was founded by the son of Italian immigrants who used Italian spices in his recipe. President Ford commented, “What could be more American than a business built on a good Italian recipe for chop suey?“
XExYk TIL in 1881, Hawaiian King David Kalakaua traveled to the International Exposition, where he met Thomas Edison, who had filed a U.S. patent for his light bulb two years earlier. That visit inspired King Kalakaua to bring electricity to Honolulu just 4 years after it was installed in the White House.
rNWwM TIL about the Hart Island Project, which is aimed at listing and identifying bodies buried in mass graves at New York City’s mass burial cemetery on Hart Island. Each body has a clock that counts the minutes, hours, days, and years until each body is identified and their story is told.